In Speech, Quinn Spells Out Education Platform

New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, center, speaks at a ceremony last week.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, a top Democratic contender in this year’s mayoral race, generally aligned her education platform with the policies of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in a speech Tuesday, saying the city needs to build on a “foundation” that is already in place.

Bloomberg and his Department of Education “have taken key steps in the right direction,” the speaker, who has been a close ally of the mayor, told a crowd of about 100 at a forum organized by The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. “But I don’t think anyone in this room or anywhere in the five boroughs would argue that our schools are where they need to be or where they should be.”

Quinn’s hour-long speech generally avoided the most fraught topics, like teacher evaluations, focusing instead on proposals like longer school days, fewer standardized tests, replacing textbooks with electronic tablets, and creating a new city office to better coordinate the various agencies serving children.

But the speaker did elicit surprised mutters and chuckles from the audience when, during a question-and-answer session, she said she would not make charter schools pay rent when they are located in public school buildings.

“If you make charter schools pay rent, that’s the end of charter schools,” she said, adding that the city must find a way for charter and public schools to exist in the same building with less tension.

She also said she feels an appropriate number of charter schools were opened under Mr. Bloomberg.

“They are never going to serve the majority of New York City school children,” she said. “It is simply not possible. I think the level we’re at is a good level, and I think we need to stop fighting over them.”

Quinn touched only briefly on the ongoing negotiations between the city and the teachers union over how to evaluate teacher performance, as a Thursday deadline for an agreement looms. She called for a plan “that doesn’t punish hardworking teachers” and for both sides to “lower the temperature of the debate.”

If the speaker did not sharply break with the mayor on substance, some education observers said she signaled a more diplomatic tone.

“A lot of what she was talking about was style and the way we would do things rather than what we do,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. “To me it sounds an awful lot like a cleansing of the palate here.”

And while Quinn did not criticize Bloomberg directly, she did point out areas where she said the status quo is failing. For instance, she said charter schools have not been the “laboratories for innovation” that they were supposed to be. “Unless your child goes to a charter school, you probably haven’t seen any benefit,” she said.

She also said she would be slower to close struggling schools than the current administration, advocating earlier intervention and giving schools more time to correct themselves.

“Instead of treating school closings like a goal in itself, we should see it as a last resort when all else has failed,” she said.

Williams said schools will probably still close if Quinn ends up leading the city, but the process may be more “collaborative” and result in less anger.

“The policy itself may be not all that different, but it’s an example of where the style and the starting point may be different,” he said.

Quinn’s platform also called for all of the city’s textbooks to be replaced by tablets; for the city’s 100 poorest schools to have school days extended to 6 p.m.; for the elimination of field testing and broader use of “portfolio assessments” as an alternative to standardized tests; for the city’s best teachers to leave the classroom for two years at a time to act as mentors to new teachers; and for a new “deputy mayor for Education and Children;” and other changes.

The speaker said her education agenda would cost about $300 million, but all of it could be paid for without raising taxes, by finding savings and redirecting current funds. That claim was challenged on Twitter by one of her rivals for the mayoralty, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who has called for raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for education. He wrote, in part: “Easy to say we can find the $ — much harder to pinpoint.”

“Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn have had years to cut costs and make things like universal pre-K a reality,” De Blasio said later, through a spokeswoman. “They haven’t delivered. Without the political courage to back these ideas with real revenue, we’re setting ourselves up for more of the same.”